Maybe I’m just old school, but I have seen a strong focus on the safety fundamentals make tremendous progress in both performance and culture. Once we have milked the fundamentals for all they have to offer, then (maybe) our management system and culture will have matured to a point where we could manage a nice shiny cherry on top to drive that “continuous improvement” element to the next level.
But let’s be honest: Few businesses are at this stage, and it takes years to get to this level. Getting too fancy too fast can actually do more long-term harm to safety’s credibility (e.g., the old flavor of the month club approach).
Specific example: if the facility struggles to report near misses and first aid OR they are being reported but the facility is not properly investigated/analyzed for maximized learning opportunities and risk reduction, then we are living in a fantasy world if we think we are ready for a Behavior Based Safety Observation Process. Trust me, implementing a BBS process before we have matured in our Incident Management will only result in “behaviors” being the #1 cause of incidents. Our biases are hard to overcome, and BBS is the grand opening to our “human error” biases.
It’s not a slam against BBS; it’s just a warning of what will happen if we are not careful.
LinkedIn has become a billboard for safety; you can find whatever flavor you want, even old cranky safety bast_rds like me. 